'All right, Trout Lake Road and Mathiesson provide the only access to Pump House Drive. You and you.' Cardinal pointed to two of the uniformed men. 'I want those points blocked. He isn't getting out of there. And no one's going in.'
'What about the lake?'
'No one's going on the lake, not on that ice. Burke and Szelagy, you stay at the top of the drive to keep away neighborhood onlookers, and pen the guy in if he busts out of the pump house. McLeod, Collingwood, and Delorme will come with me. Everyone clear?'
Everyone was clear.
'Eric Fraser is armed. Eric Fraser is dangerous. And Eric Fraser deserves to be dead.'
'You're not kidding,' someone- probably Szelagy- muttered.
'But Eric Fraser also has a hostage- an eighteen-year-old boy- and we don't want to get that boy killed. If anyone's life comes under immediate threat, you take Fraser down. But only then. Are we clear?'
They were clear.
'All right, then.' Cardinal opened the car door. 'Let's get it done.'
Cardinal raised the unit already staked out at the top of Pump House Drive. Nothing was happening. No movement of any kind. Gripping the wheel, he realized he was shaking. It felt like fear, but it was pure adrenaline. He breathed deeply to steady himself. He didn't want to be shaking when he pulled out the Beretta, wishing yet again that he'd put in those hours on the range.
The two lead cars plowed through the slush at the turnoff and jounced along the road toward the pump house. As planned, Larry Burke and Ken Szelagy stayed to guard the entrance.
Burke and Szelagy had been the first cops to see Katie Pine's body in the shafthead on Windigo Island, and, ever since, Burke had found it frustrating to watch Delorme and Cardinal from a distance and not be part of the action. He wanted to be a detective himself someday.
A car slowed, and a man in his fifties- an executive, Burke guessed- leaned out the window. 'What's going on? What's with all the cops out here?'
Larry Burke waved him on. 'Keep moving, sir. We need this area clear.'
'But what's going on?'
'Just keep moving, please, sir.' He gave the man a first-class, Aylmer-regulation dose of cold-cop authority, and it worked; it usually did. The man drove on.
Cardinal had asked for him and Szelagy to be in on this final stage of the case, and Burke appreciated it. Pine- Curry was the case of the century as far as Algonquin Bay was concerned. Cardinal had the pick of the force, but he asked for Burke and Szelagy, and Larry Burke cheered himself with this thought.
Another car rolled up. A woman driver, not attractive, Burke decided.
'You'll have to move along, ma'am.'
The woman didn't even glance at him. Kept her eyes fixed on that downhill grade toward the pump house. 'What's going on? What're all these cars doing here?'
'Police business, ma'am. Just move along, please.'
To Burke's considerable irritation, the woman did not drive away. She just pulled to the side of the road and continued staring down the hill as if Christ himself were about to rise from the icy depths of Trout Lake. Burke sauntered over, rapped on her window, and pointed a gloved finger up the road. According to the Aylmer training manual, a silent gesture, if authoritative enough, will be just as effective as your voice. It wasn't.
'Move it out,' Burke said, louder this time. 'We need this road clear.'
Although the rain had long stopped, the woman's wipers were still flapping; or rather, one of them was still flapping, there was no wiper on the passenger side. She had some kind of scaly thing happening with her face. Hell of a bandage over one ear, too. Intolerable, the way she stared beyond PC Larry Burke and down the hill, totally ignoring him. No way Larry Burke was going to let her get away with that. Larry Burke was not about to screw up now, no matter how tiny his role in this production might be. 'Hey, lady!' Yelling now. 'Are you deaf?'
He slammed the flat of his hand on the car roof. The woman jerked her head up, and he caught a glimpse of terrified eyes. Then she shoved it in gear, and the car lurched away. 'Jesus,' he said to Szelagy. 'I hope they've got the highway blocked off by now. Did you see that?'
'Some people,' Szelagy said. 'Got a big nose for other people's business, you know? Have to stick it into everything.'
Burke watched the car rattle up the road, belching clouds of black exhaust. Trout Lake and its surrounding suburbs were an affluent area. Very upscale. You'd think the dumb bitch could afford a better vehicle than a half- wrecked Pinto.
55
THE pump house had been out of use for five years and looked it. It was a low, squat, ugly building of gray stone, its windows boarded up, and its roof piled high with an entire winter's accumulation of snow- three feet deep despite the recent meltage. Icicles the size of organ pipes dripped from the corners. Its virtue- from a murderer's point of view- was isolation. There was not another house for half a mile on either side, and this distance was thick with uncut brush.
Cardinal did a fast reconnoiter and established that there was no door on the lake side, just a single set of stone steps that rose from the lake to the side door, forming a perfectly smooth diagonal under the snow and ice. Fraser's Windstar was parked near the lake. Footprints and drag marks led up to the pump house. A rusty outline showed where a padlock had hung.
Soundlessly, Cardinal moved to the door and grasped the handle. He turned it as gently as possible. It didn't budge. He shook his head to signal the others.
McLeod opened his trunk and pulled out the 'boomer,' sixty pounds of solid, door-smashing iron. Delorme and he each took a handle and prepared to ram the door. Cardinal would be first in with gun drawn. All this they agreed on without speaking.
What happened next became a featured point in department war stories as they were told for years to come. Delorme and McLeod had backed away for their run at the door. Cardinal had his hand up to make the one-two- three signals. He had just finished 'one' and was raising his hand for 'two,' when Eric Fraser stepped out of the building.
He stood there, blinking in the light.
Later, there would be many theories about what made him step out just then. Going for supplies, was one theory, the call of nature was another. It didn't matter, the effect was the same.
Fraser stepped out of the building in his shirtsleeves- black hair whipping in the breeze, black jeans and black shirt vivid against the snow- stood there like an innocent man, blinking for what seemed like ten seconds but was probably less than one.
As Delorme put it later, 'This pale skinny guy with little skinny arms. I would never have called him a killer, not in a million years. That guy, he looked like a boy.'
Eric Fraser, killer of four people that they knew of, stood utterly still, his hands a little away from his sides.
Cardinal's voice sounded tinny to his own ears. 'Are you Eric Fraser?'
Fraser spun. The Beretta was in Cardinal's hand, but Fraser was through the door before he could raise it.
Ian McLeod was first through the door after him- a bit of bravery that would put him on crutches for the next three months. The side door opened on a steep set of steel steps that led down to the pump systems. McLeod slid down it with all his weight on his ankles.
Keith London screamed from the darkness, 'In here! In here! He's got a-' His shouts were cut short. Cardinal and Delorme stood at the top of the stairs, listening to McLeod's groans. Below them, the pump was a collection of deep red pipes and valves, like a colossal heart. There was a catwalk off to the right. Delorme moved along this, and Cardinal went down the steps.
'I'll be all right,' McLeod said. 'Get the bastard.'
The gray light from the half-open door barely penetrated the dark. Cardinal could see a catwalk above the pump
